SOLIDWORKS Tips and Tricks and Info on Professional 3D Printing with Stratasys from the Technical staff of CATI.

January 2012

January 28, 2012

Due to architecture changes in the 64 bit window 7 machines, you are no longer able to install 32 bit SolidWorks on a 64 bit machine. The installation manager will not allow you to even attempt the install.

This is only possible with Windows XP Professional x64 Edition operating system. The 32-bit version of SolidWorks cannot be installed on the 64-bit versions of Vista or Windows 7; the 32-bit Installation Manager blocks the ability to do so with these versions.

January 27, 2012

Computer Aided Technology, Inc.(CATI), took home top honors, receiving two awards at the recent Objet Dealer Meeting. In addition to the award for Outstanding Dealer Performance, CATI was recognized as the Top Worldwide Objet Desktop 3D Printer Dealer, selling more units of the Objet Desktop Family of 3D Printers than any Objet Dealer in the world.

January 24, 2012

A new final design rarely is achieved in a first go. It often takes some jumping around, some changes to get to that final result. An assembly feature tree in SolidWorks may end up with items listed in a "random / as developed" order. Later one might prefer to have the items listed in a different logic sense.

It a part Feature Manager Tree we know we can reorder features by simply dragging and dropping them up or down the part feature tree. Now there are issues, some order changes can have dramic positive or negative results and some attempts to reorder just don't work at first because of parent child relationships between the features.

The assembly Feature Manager Tree is similar but also another "level" of control. You can actually restructure the hierarchy of you assembly with the same drag and drop. That's really nice if thats what you wanted. It's really not so nice when you don't want to change the assembly hierarchy.

So how then does this work? The best thing to do when reordering any item in an assembly Feature Manager Tree is to hold down the Alt key before-during and until the drag and drop has completed. The result will be a simple reorder rather than a restructure of the hierarchy.

Note: The Alt key isn't always required, but even when it's not it still works. Where it really is necessary is; if your asm only has sub assemblies. Without the Alt key being used, dragging and dropping will always try to change the hierarchy. Trying to put a part between two subassemblies, will also not work without the Alt key. Again, it'll just try to rearrange the part "into" the subassembly rather than reorder. Trying to put an item after a subassembly will again default to changing the hierarchy rather than reorder.

January 23, 2012

Learn More about Objet's 3D printing solutions by stopping by booth #500 at SolidWorks World 2012.

Who is Objet?Objet produces and markets high quality 3D printers and 3D printing materials, mainly for the rapid prototyping needs of design, engineering and manufacturing companies. As a company, Objet has its headquarters in Rechovot, Israel and has been operating worldwide for nearly 13 years. Objet offers 3 different lines of 3D printers and almost 70 different 3D printing materials.

Objet 3D printers fall into 3 families: Desktop line, Professional Eden line and Objet Connex line. In total there are 9 different printers, ranging from the smallest, Objet24, to the Objet Connex500, able to print 68 different materials, including two at the same time.

January 19, 2012

Have your products ever been delayed because the documentation wasn't ready? Or, have you ever lost out on a bid because your presentation materials weren't compelling enough? You're not alone.

Instead of waiting until a project is done to get started, 3DVIA Composer lets you start creating documents almost as soon as the design process begins. See how SolidWorks and 3DVIA Composer work together to help you be more productive and win more business

Microsoft® Office Excel helps designers and engineers organize their design data, manage design information, and communicate statistics and ideas. Excel can also help solve difficult design problems. It can accelerate calculations as well as control all aspects of a SolidWorks model.

January 13, 2012

I found this really great article on the SolidWorks blog about building an igloo using SolidWorks. So, In honor of the Chicagoland's first official snow fall of the year I thought it only appropriate to share it with you here on the CATI blog. The article shows the use of SolidWorks Simulation tools to test the safety of the igloo.

January 12, 2012

One of the most popular, yet under-utilized, engineering tools is Microsoft® Office Excel. Excel is far more robust than most people think. Are you missing a chance to improve your design productivity? Excel can accelerate calculations as well as control all aspects of a SolidWorks® model. SolidWorks has put together a set of tips, in the form a few short videos, to help you use Excel to automate some of your daily engineering tasks.

Join the team at DriveWorks for one of two webinars on January 18, 2012. This webinar takes you through the quick and easy steps involved in automating your design process with DriveWorks Solo.

You will learn...

• How to capture the parameters you want to control • How to create a good looking and intelligent user interface to specify your products • How to build rules that link the form inputs to the captured parameters that control your designs

You will see how you can start automating YOUR designs straight away. 30 minutes of your time now could save you hours every single day!!